Analysis

posted on 25 June 2008 07:32

It's simple and clearcut - and could be wrong. FCOE (Fibre Channel over Ethenet) needs data center Ethernet (DCE) because that is lossless and has predictable latency. Without it applications using Fibre Channel may break because FC dependencies on no frame loss and transmission time constraints can fail.

So the convergence of data center networking onto Ethernet as the single platform for server-server networking, server-storage networking, and server/storage outside world networking is held up until DCE arrives, with an Ethernet Alliance sub-committee  on the case.

But Blade Network Technologies (BNT) says you can implement a loss-less, low latency FCOE network now. Its RackSwitch products run at 10Gbit/s Ethernet speed and don't lose packets. BNT Ethernet is lossless. It's been verified by independent testing carried out by the Tolly Group; the group's report can be dowloaded below.

It compared a BNT product with a Cisco Catalyst 6509 and concluded that, in a 10GbE port to 10GbE port bi-directional link: "the 10Gb Uplink (BNT switch) achieved 100% zero-loss (<=0.001% acceptable frame loss) throughput for all frame sizes tested, while the Cisco Catalyst could only achieve throughput
ranging from 30.2% to 52.3% for various frame sizes tested."

BNT, CEO Vikram Mehta says, goes futher. Its ports are priced substantially below Cisco and Brocade 10GbE ports. He says that a BNT port will cost around $300 whereas Cisco will ask for $5,000 a port, and that's a lossy port.

Is this for real? Can BNT sustain this level of pricing aggressiveness? Is it profitable? Mehta said BNT was spun out of Nortel in February 2006 as a privately-held corporation with venture capital funding. It then employed 46 people and had $26 million in the bank. Now it employs 150 people and has $25 million in the bank. That's less than a half million dollars a year cash burn. Mehta also said the blade server switch business is cash flow-positive.

BNT says about 45% of HP and IBM blade server systems ship with BNT switches, Cisco having about 27%. The company’s customers include half of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, and an installed base of over 170,000 network switches representing more than 4 million switch ports. This is no struggling start-up.

There's more. BNT ports have a lower power budget than Cisco ports, and need much less power than 20Gbit/s InfiniBand ports. BNT's RackSwitches fit into server racks and have the same front-to-back cooling airflow design as server racks. Mehta says that traditional network switch rack units have side-to-side airflows making them incompatible with hot aisle:cold aisle server and storage rack designs. A BNT 10GbE link is a virtual link with the servers and/or storage using it having their virtual links based on it dynamically altered in size as demands change over time.

The BNT pitch comes down to one where data centers, faced with massive cable bloat - a VMware server might have 6 Ethernet NICs, 2 Fibre Channel ports and 2 InfiniBand cluster ports - and capacity-limited power supplies as well as space constraints are facing being re-engineered to be vastly more efficient.

Mehta says that the data center unit, the base building block, should be the rack and 'rackonomics' should apply where virtual servers use low-cost virtual networking resources based on 10GbE switches embedded in the racks and not located outside them in some core networking infrastructure.

Storage racks fit into this scheme with their own resources virtualized and integrated with the virtual servers. There is no need to upgrade to brand new data center backbone switches from either Brocade or Cisco. Instead focus at the rack level and migrate your networking, your storage networking to Ethernet, either with files, with iSCSI or with FCOE, or all three. BNT demonstrated what it could do at SNW in April along with Emulex and NetAp.

It's ironic that Cisco, the big promoter, the 800lb gorilla of the Ethernet economics idea, is facing being out-gunned on its own Ethernet turf by Blade Network Technologies. It's also ironic for both Brocade and Cisco that technology exists today to implement loss-less and low latency Ethernet, making FCOE viable right now, with no need to wait for an officially sanctioned data center-class Ethernet.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}

Download file: Tolly_Lossless_IBMBladeNortel10GbESM.pdf